Memorable quote from my guitar teacher Steve during last night's lesson:
This isn't my idea, this is stuff that's been passed down, passed on to me by my teachers --- guys like Joe Pass, Pat Martino... I'm just channelling it, you know?
This earnest, impassioned confession was probably prompted by the way my jaw was flapping around the floor like some over-stretched roller blind in the wake of a particularly impressive piece of chord melody improvisation around the theme of "What a Wonderful World".
He was demonstrating this to show the application of the triad chord shapes he has been getting me to learn. I have actually come across much of this stuff before here and there, but this is the first time I'm seriously trying to learn the patterns by heart and be able to move between them fluently. I'm having a lot of fun doing it, but I think it will take a long time to really master.
It certainly helps to see how these chords can be used --- once you have the kind of fretboard knowledge that allows you to move effortlessly from one chord to another without resorting to simply shifting the standard "root 6" and "root 5" barre chords up and down the neck (Steve, a seemingly diehard jazz player, expresses a particular disdain for these). It's the concept of voice leading -- where each note moves in a harmonious way when you move from one chord to the next.
One of the slightly surprising things watching Steve playing little improvised ditties is that it's not all perfection. There are plenty of little glitches -- moments where he fingers the wrong chord (and quickly corrects it), or temporarily draws a blank when looking for the nearest Bmin7b5 fingering or something. But somehow these mistakes are themselves impressive: you get an insight into how much thought goes into each chord change or substitution --- how much is going on behind the scenes. And in many cases, I doubt I would even detect the "mistake" if he didn't mention it.
It's quite interesting -- and one more benefit of learning from a human teacher rather than books...
Great that you're enjoying it man.
ReplyDeleteI always tried to explain the concept of voice leading as a 'lazy' way of playing to my students (they seemed to relate to that!) ie the less you have to move along the fretboard to get to the next chord the better. So I'd give them a standard, or any progression really, and make them play it all within 4 or five frets, showing them that it bviously helps the more voicings you have access to in the old memory banks.
Or for a really cool, simple example of voice leading on bluesy dominant 7th style thing, just check out Jimmy Page's tritone riff in Rock and Roll, just moving a fret at a time but outlining each (implied) chord perfectly.